Scandinavia Is Years Ahead on Sustainability
Brands need to engage with sustainability and transparency agendas more than ever – we look to Scandinavian fashion for insights and inspiration.
Tackling its sustainability issue remains one of the fashion industry’s biggest tasks.
However, there’s a region where brands are years ahead; Scandinavia.
In this piece, we examine the measures Scandinavian brands – like Nudie Jeans, Filippa K, Asket, Ganni, and more – are taking to deliver a sustainable future for fashion, highlighting how the region is setting the industry’s sustainability gold standard.
With growing scrutiny amongst global consumers and the impending arrival of the European Commission’s Digital Product Passport (DPP), brands need to engage with sustainability and transparency agendas more than ever before. Looking to Scandinavia for insights and inspiration is a logical place to start.
Nudie Jeans
Nudie Jeans actually give a f**k about sustainability, and a commitment to transparency is central to their brand.
Just look at their product landing pages…
Demonstrating ethical beliefs or a shift in thinking is the key to unlocking sustainable operations; it’s not enough to simply say; you have to live it.
Denim is the heart of the Swedish brand which has achieved international success. Denim is, however, a point of contention in sustainable fashion circles due to the resource-intensiveness of cotton cultivation and substantial water usage, which naturally leads to high energy consumption during production.
To tackle denim production’s key challenges, Nudie Jeans applies a combination of initiatives and products designed for long-term life cycles, creating “tomorrow’s vintage” through re-use and repair.
From a production perspective, this begins with materials, of which Nudie uses 100% organic Fairtrade and recycled cotton; per the brand’s site, this marks the first step in environmental impact production by eliminating the risks associated with hazardous chemicals used in conventional cotton farming. Furthermore, organic cotton is largely rain-fed, offsetting much of the consumption associated with denim production.
In making each of its sustainability commitments, initiatives, and impact at an operational level, from production to distribution, Nudie utilises transparency – particularly within its supply chain – by offering in-depth sustainability reports; its 2022 report, for example, highlights that it repaired over 65,000 pairs of jeans through its free repairs forever, offset its full business emissions through the UN Carbon Offset Platform, and increased its capacity for repair and reuse.
Furthermore, Nudie’s product pages dive deep into every material component and process involved in the garment’s production; this includes the names and locations of each company involved in production and supply, including the suppliers of individual components such as zips, buttons, labels, and threads.
This then culminates in a graph highlighting the product’s climate impact and water usage.
By combining a highly transparent supply chain that focuses on all areas of the business – free, global repair shops and repair partners, limited-edition deadstock denim releases, and discounts on new products when trading in a pair of pre-loved jeans – Nudie Jeans has a strong foundation, belief system, and is recognised as a sustainable leader.
ASKET
Fellow Swedish brand, ASKET, has similarly built a reputation for its sustainability efforts, particularly through its transparency standards that form the basis of its “Pursuit of Less.”
As a brand that prides itself on a minimalist product catalogue in which high-quality design takes focus, “The Pursuit of Less” is a fundamental way of thinking that also emanates across the brand’s supply chain operations and creating a shopping experience that provides the tools to shop with responsibility and awareness.
This presents itself through the brand’s mission statement, which includes: “We don’t design for seasons, we create for forever.” Building this into its product offering, ASKET focuses on creating a permanent collection of wardrobe essentials designed with life cycle responsibility, presented through care, repair, and take-back programs that encourage less consumption.
In this, ASKET has committed itself to full transparency in a far more impactful way than most brands on the market. This approach is three-tiered: cost transparency, full traceability, and impact transparency through “The Impact Receipt.” Each of these pillars within their sustainability mission works in tandem to achieve their short and long-term goals of achieving a “world free of fast consumption.”
ASKET’s commitment to providing transparent cost analysis of every product it produces sets it apart from the market. On every product page on its site, you’ll find a full costing breakdown of garment production, including fabric, manufacture, transport, and packaging. This full “true cost” is used as a profit marker, highlighting the traditional retail cost of like products against ASKET’s pricing.
Such transparency concerning cost and profit is a rarity in the industry. As such, it reflects the values held within the brand while allowing consumers to understand the value of products they’re purchasing and encourages conscious buying.
The next layer in its full transparency promise is ensuring each garment it produces can be fully traced to its source; this means every facility involved in each process and component of garment production is traced, offering the full picture where “made in” is concerned. To emphasise this, traditional “made in” labels are replaced with in-depth insights that further encourage informed decision-making for the consumer.
Finally, ASKET offers its industry-leading “Impact Receipt,” which was implemented to provide full clarity on the impact of its products by breaking down the “cost” of production, distribution, use, and product end-life on the planet. The combination of cost transparency, full traceability, and the “Impact Receipt” offers consumers a unique shopping experience in which they’re completely aware of how their purchase(s) affect the planet across the supply chain.
Ultimately, ASKET’s dedication to transparency culminates in a well-informed consumer base; by providing care guides free in-store repairs, repair kits, and the Revival Program rewards where it re-sells or recycles pre-loved products, buyers can close the loop.
Filippa K
At Filippa K, a five-pillar, actionable sustainability approach is in place, each highlighted within its sustainability reporting. These areas of action ensure each stage of the supply chain is given strong focus, with their effects felt at both brand and consumer levels.
The natural first stage is sourcing and production, where the brand's focus is traceability and transparency.
Both inform the core of its sustainability goals, which include achieving 50% of all garments to be traceable to the fibre’s country of origin by 2025; currently, 20% of products have such certification. Within this, the brand also offers an overview of its supplier locations and specific production volumes, in addition to supplier bios that serve as an educational resource.
Through the fibre traceability initiative, the brand aims to support the goal of supporting DPP with product QR codes that offer consumers direct knowledge of garment sourcing, care advice, and second-life solutions.
The following two pillars: materials and innovation, and circularity, bring product quality and longevity (ultimately the use and end-life phases) into focus.
Filippa K promotes high-quality, performance, and long-lasting impact through material research and innovation, which have, in turn, seen it achieve eight individual material certifications. These certifications then play into its circularity values with garment care instructions, maintenance, repair solutions, and the brand’s pre-loved marketplace and credit trade-in offer consumers multiple product life cycle solutions.
While the first three pillars put production, supply, use, and end-life initiative into perspective, the final two speak to Filippa K’s environmental and social impact and responsibilities. Following the EU’s commitment to 50% carbon emission reduction by 2030, the brand has been working to achieve the same goal across textile, transportation, use, energy, etc.
This has presented itself through a tight focus on water usage and pollution, chemical use, and biodiversity within the supply chain, which, coupled with its commitments to high labour standards across its network, aims to build deep, long-lasting relationships with shared environmental and social values.
ASKET’s five-pillar sustainability strategy is perhaps one of the most in-depth and transparent in the fashion industry, demonstrating how many focus areas are needed to make an impact at scale – change can, and must be top-to-bottom.
Final thoughts
Fashion’s sustainability issue is not easily solved but giving a s**t helps.
Sustainable leaders, especially within Scandinavia’s fashion scene, have demonstrated that through conscious, ethically-considered efforts from top-to-bottom, across the full length of their supply chains and product life cycles can make impactful change.
What separates the sustainable efforts made by the region’s brands from many others within the industry is making commitments not for the sake of ticking boxes or achieving quotas, but the passionate pursuit of achieving a more sustainable future for the industry that puts humans – staff, producers, suppliers, consumers – and the planet first.
Genuine care and the desire to change the status quo are non-negotiables if the fashion industry is going to make the shifts needed to reshape its misaligned relationship with sustainability, and, as demonstrated by the brands mentioned, begins with transparency.